XPost: alt.crime, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, alt.society.liberalism   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   After serving 10 years of a 292-year sentence for nonviolent offenses, an   
   Arizona man has been released from prison.   
      
   Atdom Patsalis, who was recently granted clemency and sentenced to home   
   arrest, was greeted by family and supporters as he walked out of a   
   community reentry building in Phoenix Thursday morning.   
      
   He said it felt surreal to finally be free.   
      
   "I had absolutely accepted the fact that I would spend the rest of my life   
   in prison," Patsalis said. "So this feels like a dream."   
      
   In 2015, Patsalis was convicted on 25 felony counts stemming from a string   
   of residential burglaries in Bullhead City over three months in late 2013   
   and early 2014. He was in his early 20s at the time, homeless and   
   struggling with drug addiction.   
      
   The judge ordered all convictions to run consecutively, turning a series   
   of lesser sentences into a life sentence.   
      
   Patsalis spent years appealing the convictions but was ultimately   
   unsuccessful. With the help of the Arizona Justice Project, a Phoenix-   
   based nonprofit that advocates for the innocent and wrongly convicted,   
   Patsalis recently secured a shortening of his sentence through the   
   clemency process.   
      
   After a final hearing earlier this month, the Arizona Board of Clemency   
   agreed to release Patsalis to home arrest, subject to electronic   
   monitoring.   
      
   Atdom's mother, Daina Patsalis, said it felt good to hug her son again   
   after she embraced him outside the parole building.   
      
   "We're so grateful because he gets to have a life now. He wants to get a   
   job, meet somebody, fall in love, have children — give me some   
   grandbabies," she said, laughing.   
      
   Shawnee Ziegler, the Arizona Justice Project's director of operations,   
   worked on Patsalis' case and credited the Arizona Board of Executive   
   Clemency for looking at who Atdom had become, not just the person who   
   committed the crimes.   
      
   "Atdom's case was one of the worst cases of manifest injustice that we had   
   seen in the 26-year history of our project," she said. "So being here   
   today to watch him walk out is just a miracle."   
      
   Lindsay Herf, executive director of the Arizona Justice Project,   
   questioned the purpose of such an extreme sentence.   
      
   "What purpose does it serve the community? Maybe it's not the best idea to   
   send someone away for the rest of their life, not knowing what change is   
   possible," she said.   
      
   In four months, Patsalis will have an opportunity to go before the   
   Clemency Board again to potentially be given general parole without any   
   monitoring. Eventually, he could see an absolute discharge of his   
   sentence.   
      
   Patsalis said he plans to record songs he wrote about his experiences   
   while in prison.   
      
   Patsalis will first live at a reentry center. He hopes to find work in the   
   automotive field, with a longer-term goal of getting a real estate   
   license.   
      
   "I don't think that the justice system is supposed to be about locking   
   people up and taking people's hope away," Pastalis said. "It's about   
   giving people the opportunity to make different choices and decisions.   
   Giving them an opportunity to have a second chance."   
      
   https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2024/09/20/arizona-man-   
   sentenced-to-hundreds-of-years-released-from-prison/75300489007/   
      
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